Commmunity
At the 14th Regional Mobile Chief Executive Officer Forum, CSR was on the agenda. The Group agreed to review opportunities for collaboration on CSR projects such as education and community service projects. We started the SingTel regional scholarship programme and expect our first batch of scholars in the coming year.

In Australia, our employees were involved in selecting charities for our Workplace Giving Program, which has donated more than A$550,000 to a wide range of charities since the programme commenced in 2005. Optus’ 13 charity partners include the Cancer Council, World Vision, Mission Australia, the Salvation Army and Youth off the Streets, with Optus matching employees’ contributions dollar-for-dollar.

In addition to financial support, we provide management expertise, communications services and staff engagement opportunities to a number of our community partners including Kids Helpline, the Starlight Children’s Foundation and the Australian Business Community Network (“ABCN”). ABCN was created to drive positive social change through practical programmes that engage educators, government and the business sector to support disadvantaged students.

To further encourage our people to engage the local community, we launched a volunteering programme across Australia and Singapore, giving staff the opportunity to take one day of paid leave per year to support the local community or their favourite charity. Over the past 12 months, 3 per cent of Optus staff donated more than 2,300 volunteer hours through this programme.

We continued to support Australia’s rich artistic diversity through our sponsorship of the Bell Shakespeare Company’s Actors at Work Program and The Optus Community Access Performance Program, a joint initiative with theatre group Company B.

Through a long-term partnership with Tennis Australia, we have helped develop and support players at grassroots junior levels all the way through to elite events such as the Australian Open and the Davis and Fed Cup.

In Singapore, the SingTel Touching Lives Fund (“STLF”) raised a total of S$2.4 million in 2007, exceeding its target commitment of S$2.3 million, with contributions from SingTel Group employees. Since its launch in 2002, the STLF, SingTel’s flagship philanthropy programme, has raised a total of S$12.7 million for 18 charities affiliated to the National Council of Social Service (“NCSS”).

The S$2.4 million in 2007 is the highest amount raised so far, through events such as the SingTel Charity Golf, Fold-A-Heart and SingTel Charity Walk.

The proceeds raised from the STLF go towards the work of five charitable organisations: APSN Tanglin School, Autism Resource Centre, Fei Yue Community Services, Singapore Children’s Society and Students Care Service. SingTel matches all outright donations to the STLF dollar-for-dollar.

SingTel has been a Corporate SHARE (Social Help and Assistance Raised by Employees) company since 1992 and matches employee contributions to SHARE dollar-for-dollar. We further lend our expertise to the community by sponsoring telecommunications services. Since 1991, we have been providing an annual grant to NCSS to defray the costs of telecommunications services for NCSS and its charities.

In 2007, some of the events we sponsored include the Singapore National Day Parade and the President’s Star Charity Show. We further supported a wide range of community projects such as IDA’s NEU PC scheme for needy families to access the Internet, Taman Jurong Citizens’ Consultative Committee Scholarship for the Elderly, President’s Challenge and National Environment Agency’s Eco Concert.